Tag: Quentin Tarantino

Star Trek fans have been curious since it was announced that Quentin Tarantino will be directing a new film in the franchise. What would the director of violent films such as Reservoir Dogs (1992), Django Unchained (2012), and The Hateful Eight (2015) do to the beloved series? Now, Nerdist presents a short preview for how they imagine the new film will look.

The trailer features a narrator over scenes from the original series. It also includes a guitar soundtrack that sounds right out of Pulp Fiction (1994).

In Nerdist’s imagination, the Tarantino film will feature Captain Kirk and the rest of the gang blazing their way through the universe with guns and punches. Do not want to cross this crew.

The Hateful Eight (2015), billed as the eighth film from Quentin Tarantino, is a Western set in the post-Civil War years on the American frontier. The movie stars Samuel L. Jackson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kurt Russell, Bruce Dern, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Walton Goggins, and others. Ennio Morricone, who wrote great music for many of the classic spaghetti Westerns, provides the musical score for The Hateful Eight (although the song that Jennifer Jason Leigh sings is an old Australian folk song).

Whether or not you like the three-hour film may largely depend on how you feel about the violence and other aspects of Tarantino’s films. While most regard Pulp Fiction (1994) as a masterpiece (and I agree), his movies since Jackie Brown (1997) have delved into brutal areas that divide viewers. So, instead of a regular review, below are “8 Things About The Hateful Eight.”

1. Tarantino remains a master at building tension by featuring conversations inevitably leading up to an explosion of violence.

2. I liked Tarantino’s decision about showing the movie in Ultra Panavision 70mm. I like the format for films, although because the movie was a Western I expected more outdoor shots. Instead it was set largely indoors (“four-fifths” of the film, by one count), arguably somewhat wasting the beauty of the format.

3. But the indoor setting highlighted similarities between the approach of The Hateful Eight to Tarantino’s classic Reservoir Dogs (1992), focusing on the interactions between characters with flashbacks to solve mysteries.

4. Depending on your point of view, The Hateful Eight comments on America’s brutality, racism, and misogyny both today and in the post-Civil War frontier. Or Tarantino unnecessarily overuses the n-word and imposes violence against a woman as a sort of running joke. Or maybe it is a little of both, but the film certainly goes over the top at points.

5. Some folks loved the movie. The Guardian headlines “Tarantino triumphs with a western of wonder.” There is some talk of a Best Picture Academy Award nomination. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 75% Critics rating and a 79% Audience rating.

6. Some folks hated the movie, arguing that the movie is not about big American themes but instead is just a bunch of talk as an excuse to lead to violent killings. Matt Zoller Seitz on RogerEbert.com concludes that “there’s no detectable moral framework to speak of.” Similarly, The Atlantic calls it a “Gory Epic in Search of Meaning.” In an insightful conclusion, Seitz raises an interesting question about Tarantino: “It’s hard to shake the suspicion that, deep down, he believes in nothing but sensation, and that he’s spent the last decade or so stridently identifying with oppressed groups so that he can get a gold star for making the kinds of films he’d be making anyway.”

8. The movie kept me entertained and some of it was brilliant, but some of the language and violence were unnecessarily distracting. One killing near the end was ridiculous and overly cruel, although the final scene was great. After watching the film, I felt like I needed to do something to wash my brain of all the nastiness. I went home and watched an Anthony Mann Western.

What did you think of “The Hateful Eight”? Leave your two cents in the comments.

In one of the rare touching moments in Quentin Tarantino’s film The Hateful Eight (2015), the captured fugitive Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) picks up a guitar and sings a song about a prisoner on a ship. Although Domergue eventually adds a few lines of her own about getting revenge upon her captor John “The Hangman” Ruth (Kurt Russell) and escaping to Mexico, the song itself is a traditional Australian folk song called “Jim Jones at Botany Bay,” or sometimes simply “Jim Jones.”

“Jim Jones at Botany Bay”

The song refers to the first Australian penal colony, Botany Bay, where England sent convicts beginning in 1788. Star Trek fans may recognize the name because the ship that carried Khan Noonien Singh and his comrades was named the S.S. Botany Bay after the penal colony.

In “Jim Jones at Botany Bay,” the singer Jim Jones is an English convict who has been sentenced to ride the ship to the penal colony, although the judge first threatened to hang him. On the trip, the men on the ship repel a group of pirates, but Jones thinks, “I’d rather joined that pirate ship than come to New South Wales.”

And some dark night when everything is silent in this town, I’ll kill the tyrants one by one and shoot the floggers down; I’ll give the law a little shock, remember what I say; They’ll yet regret they sent Jim Jones in chains to Botany Bay.

The song was first published in 1907, although The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature notes that scholars speculate that the song was written around 1830 because of the reference to the bushranger Jack Donahue (sometimes spelled “John Donohoe”). Donahue was an Irishman sentenced to Australia in 1825. But he later escaped, forming gangs that stole from wealthy land owners. He eventually was killed in a shootout in New South Wales.

So, the song would have been around during the years after the Civil War, which is the setting for The Hateful Eight. And it might not be unusual for someone like Daisy Domergue to be fond of a ballad about another outlaw.

Versions of the Song

“Jim Jones at Botany Bay” has been performed and recorded by a number of singers. Bob Dylan recorded “Jim Jones” for his Good As I Been To You (1992) album. You may hear a clip of Bob Dylan’s version on his website.

The video below features Old Crow Medicine Show performing the song at Byron Bay Bluesfest in 2010. Check it out.

For a complete recording of “Jim Jones at Botany Bay,” below is a version by Australian singer-songwriter Gary Shearston.

In modern decades, the song has been used as a song of defiance as it was in The Hateful Eight. For example, English folksinger A.L. “Bert” Lloyd sang ““Jim Jones at Botany Bay”” at London’s Westminster Hall during a rally in support of releasing political activist Angela Davis in the 1970s. So, whenever you are feeling a bit rebellious, crank up “Jim Jones at Botany Bay.”

If you have ever wondered what the movie Pulp Fiction (1994) might look like if it had been a video game in the 1980s, CineFix has answered your question. In the following video, CineFix shows the classic Quentin Tarantino film presented in 8-bit video game glory (with a touch of 16-bit). Check it out.

Last night, Saturday Night Live pondered what subject director Quentin Tarantino may tackle next after turning the Holocaust and American slavery into revenge fantasies in Inglourious Basterds (2009) and Django Unchained (2012). In a mock ad, this week’s host Christoph Waltz, who starred in both those movies, appeared in the starring role in a new Tarantino film, DJesus Uncrossed.

While the short DJesus Uncrossed video seems mainly aimed at making fun of the Tarantino style and our fascination with revenge films, some have complained that it mocks Christians. Check it out and judge for yourself.

How would you rate the video for “Djesus Uncrossed”: funny, so-so, or offensive? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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